One Thing Leads to a Lover (Love and Let Spy #2) - Susanna Craig Page 0,104
a moment, she had forgotten that a part of their future together still lay in shadow.
Langley, however, only smiled and nodded at the request. “I’d be delighted. And you’ve just reminded me that I do have a little gift of my own.” He reached into his breast pocket, grimacing a little as he shifted his sling to do it, and withdrew a folded paper. “Though I admit I was thinking of your mother when I got it,” he said as he held it out to her.
It was a curiously stained piece of parchment, and when she unfolded it, she could have sworn she caught a whiff of brandy. She had to read through the scrawled words twice to make sure she understood what they said. And who had written them.
“What is it?” Jamie demanded.
“A letter, from Lord Dulsworthy, about your going to school—”
Disappointment flickered in Jamie’s dark eyes. “You mean, not going.”
The words seared her. It had taken her too long to realize her own overprotectiveness. Despite a lifetime of resentment at being told to mind her own step, she’d very nearly clipped her sons’ wings. But it was not too late to watch them soar. “I admit, I have my reservations. It’s only natural for mamas to worry,” she added with a glance at her mother, both seeking and offering forgiveness for years of misunderstanding. “And after your father died, I wanted to be the one to make all the decisions about your education. But that was wrong of me. Lord Dulsworthy’s letter means that when you boys are ready”—she looked at each of her sons in turn, and finally at Langley, wondering what he’d done to procure George’s cooperation—“it will be a family decision.”
“I can go to Harrow?” Jamie’s face lit up as he came to throw his arms around her neck. “Thank you, Mama. And thank you, too,” he added, turning toward Langley. “Say, what are we to call you after you marry Mama?”
“Major Stanhope?” Pip was eyeing his uniform.
“Perhaps Sir Langley?” suggested their grandmother.
Jamie straightened and looked from Langley to Amanda and back again. “Would it be all right to call you Papa?”
Langley started. “Yes. I suppose it would. If you wish it. Someday.” Each little statement was punctuated by a noise in his throat. Once she might have misunderstood that gruff sound, but now she recognized it as a mask for his embarrassment. And his surprise. And his pleasure. “I would be honored, Jamie.”
Anyone who came upon them, enjoying tea and cake in the morning room—Pip trying out fencing maneuvers with an icing-covered knife while his grandmama laughingly reprimanded him, Langley and Jamie with their heads bent together over a treatise on mathematics—doubtless would have taken it for a sketch of ordinary family life. Perhaps even a trifle dull.
Amanda, however, knew that beneath the surface of those everyday moments lay passion and adventure enough for a lifetime. And love, too. Because the man beside her might hide behind a number of disguises and go by a laundry list of different names.
But to her, he would always be the Magpie.
Epilogue
Pausing in his perusal of the message that had just been delivered, Langley watched Amanda arrange the last of the summer roses in a vase on the hall table. Such a simple, ordinary thing. Just as cozy and domestic as he’d imagined the first time he’d brought her to this house. The day he’d first begun to consider whether this place could once more be a home. Whether it might be possible to build a future with her.
And now, that future was here.
Folding the note behind his back, he stepped closer, laid his free hand on her hip, pressed a kiss to the curve of her shoulder. “You know, your mother and the boys won’t be here for at least another hour.”
For the past few weeks, Mrs. West had stayed with her grandsons in London, while Langley and Amanda had enjoyed a honeymoon of sorts in Richmond. He had missed Jamie and Philip and looked forward to the reunion of their family, but their arrival was certainly going to put a damper on his project to make love to his wife in every room of the house.
“Only an hour?” Amanda exclaimed, even as she turned toward his embrace. “I should make sure that Mrs. Morris has—”
“She has.”
“And check on the—”
“Already done.”
“Well, what about the—”
“Sorted, I’m sure.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say,” she protested with a delightful pout.